


When the Darkness Has Robbed You

by yet_intrepid



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Slavery, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Attempted Sexual Assault, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Hurt Luke, Misgendering, Non-Sexual Slavery, Outing, Sad Luke, Suicidal Thoughts, Tatooine, Trans Character, Trans Luke Skywalker, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-07-10 11:57:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6984118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yet_intrepid/pseuds/yet_intrepid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Two truths, like the two suns: don’t tangle with the Hutts, and if they tangle with you, refuse them nothing. Avoid. Appease. Acquiesce. A faltering word or a careless movement could spell death.</p>
<p>Luke knows, knows like every child on the planet. Like the planet itself, somehow, deep in its core. But knowing is different from needing to know."</p>
<p>In which Luke races pods, like his father before him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Your Hope Falls Down

**Author's Note:**

> Please heed the warnings. This fic includes suicidal thoughts, character death, misgendering of a transgender character, and attempted sexual assault.

i.

Standing at the finish line of the Harvest Day races, Luke tells himself he did okay. Considering the pod was cobbled from scrap, and considering this was his first big race, he maybe even did pretty well. But _pretty well_ won’t bring in the prize money, and no prize money means no flight school.

He sighs, bending over his pod to inspect the damage. The thing still runs, miraculously—got him through the second lap even after some sleemo rammed into him and knocked off the steering. But he’ll have to spend a fair bit of time shaping it up again, and that’ll provide plenty of opportunities for Uncle Owen to lecture him about how _your place is on the farm_ and _tinkering with that costs you good sleep, you know_.

“Hey!”

Luke catches movement at the edges of his vision. Gamorreans, he realizes. Blast. The last thing he wants is Hutt guards around.

“Hey!” one of them calls again, and they’re talking to him.

Sarlacc bile, Luke thinks. He straightens up slowly. “What’s going on?” he asks—in Huttese, because it’s rare to find a Gamorrean who speaks Basic and he can’t get his mouth around Gamorrese.

The Gamorreans start surrounding him; one of them grabs him by the arm. “Jabba wants you. Told us, get that human girl so I can make an offer.”

Luke’s gut twists. First, instinctively, at the word _girl_ , and second, because an offer from Jabba is not, in fact, an offer.

He’s known this from childhood. Two truths, like the two suns: don’t tangle with the Hutts, and if they tangle with you, refuse them nothing. Avoid. Appease. Acquiesce. A faltering word or a careless movement could spell death.

Luke knows, knows like every child on the planet. Like the planet itself, somehow, deep in its core. But knowing is different from needing to know.

The Gamorreans push him through the crowds and into the turbolift. He tries to breathe deep, keep calm. As he bows to Jabba, he pushes away the voice which tells him everything is over.

“Greetings, Exalted One.” He starts the conversation properly, paying attention to his accent. “You sent for me?”

Jabba shifts. His motion pulls at the neck of a chained Twi’lek slave, and Luke looks down to hide the flash of empathy on his face.

“They tell me this is your first race,” says Jabba. “You finished.”

“Yes, your Exaltedness,” Luke says. He can hear his pulse behind his ears. “But not first.”

Jabba waves a short arm in dismissal. “You are a human. Humans do not finish. They do not race at all.”

“My species is—unpredictable, Exalted One.”

Jabba grunts. “I have an offer for you, human. Sponsorship in the Boonta Eve races.”

And there it is. Honestly, Luke isn’t sure how that’s supposed to go wrong. He gets to race, right? He doesn’t have to pay the entry fee, and Jabba might even supply the pod. As long as he does well, Jabba wins his bets, and then Luke gets the prize money for flight school.

Well. As long as he _wins_. Lose, and Jabba might toss him into a cage match. But say no, and he risks more. Jabba’s certainly not above going after his family, his friends.

Luke bows again. “Such sponsorship is an honor beyond imagination, Exalted Jabba. I accept your offer.”

They lead him away without discussing the terms. Luke resists the urge to twist from the Gamorreans’ grasp.

Avoid. Appease. Acquiesce. Try to get something out of it.

 

ii.

Luke’s always kind of hated Boonta Eve.

Not the races, of course. The races are great. He’s worked repair a couple times, gotten his hands on those pods. Dreamed of flying one.

But podracing isn’t all there is to the holiday.

He doesn’t think about it, though. Doesn’t think about anything. Just tests everything out on Jabba’s pod as he waits at the starting line, flashes back through his hours of practice. He bounces on his toes and goes clear and sharp.

When racetime comes, he fits on his helmet and feels his way through it. Streaming air, desert heat, his hands on the thrusters and the steering. He is there and he is nowhere and he is everywhere. He is a part of everything and he remembers nothing.

When he slides across the finish line, well ahead of the pod in second, his heart is still flying.

But it crashes hard and fast, the sight of the Gamorrean guards hitting him like a blaster bolt. He’s gotten used to this a little while practicing with the pod at Jabba’s palace, but the thought of having to talk to the Hutt lord again fills him with icy dread.

Hey, Luke reminds himself, you won, right? He’s not gonna kill you for winning. You took the offer; you did what he wanted. You’re clear. He just wants to congratulate you or something, that’s all.

As they go up the turbolift, though, he realizes the rest of the holiday has already started. Jabba’s slaves—the ones favored enough to be brought to the races, anyway—are kneeling around him, and Luke swallows hard. It’s not that he’s never seen this before, but it doesn’t get easier.

A Dug overseer stands beside Jabba and starts to recite. “I pledge my obedience to the Exalted Lord Jabba, to work and to go and to stay…”

The Gamorrean behind Luke starts pushing at him. Luke pushes back. “Hey,” he whispers, “what—”

“To work and to go and to stay,” the crowd of slaves is repeating, in one dead voice. Luke keeps struggling as huge green hands push him to his knees.

“I pledge my loyalty to the Exalted Lord Jabba, to honor and speak and be silent,” intones the Dug. One of the Gamorrean guards steps hard on the back of Luke’s leg, and he goes still as the slaves echo. “I pledge my loyalty to the Exalted Lord Jabba…”

 _I’m not a slave_ , Luke wants to protest, _I’m not. I made one deal; I didn’t agree to this._

But as he looks across at the others kneeling with him, he knows not one of them agreed to this.

“I pledge myself to the Exalted Lord Jabba,” the Dug finishes, “to live at his bidding and die at his will.”

The Gamorrean steps on Luke’s leg again when he doesn’t immediately join the response.

“…die at his will,” he mutters, giving in. It’s not like he means it.

He hates Boonta Eve.

 

iii.

“Excuse me.”

Luke looks up. He’s tuning up the inertial compensator on Jabba’s starship, but the interruption is more than welcome. This isn’t even his job, after all—just something handed off to him by a crewmember who thinks his indenture means higher status than Luke’s slavery.

There’s a girl, maybe fifteen, standing above the hatch. She has curly dark hair, brown skin. He’s seen her around in the slave quarters, so he swings himself up to talk to her.

“You’re Skywalker?” she asks.

“Yeah,” says Luke.

“They sent me to find you.” She fidgets with the hem of her loose shirt. “You do the training for the games.”

“Yeah,” says Luke again, because there’s nothing else to say. “Yeah, that’s me.”

She doesn’t look at him. “I’ve been selected,” she says. “They picked me for the mine race at the end of the week.”

Luke counts the days. Three, if he starts now. Three days to train this kid to navigate a field of buried explosives and laser trip lines. He can give what he’s got to help her survive, but if he’s honest with himself, she doesn’t have a chance.

Not with him as a trainer, especially.

He sits down on the edge of the hatch and gestures for her to join him. “Look,” he says. “We’ll go out today; I’ll show you some things. But I want you to underperform. That way, I can make the recommendation that you’re not ready. Try to buy you some time. That’s the best I can do.”

Her eyes flick up to his, then back down. “I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t want a beating.”

“Do you want to die?” asks Luke. “Because—what’s your name?”

“Pesca.”

“Pesca. They’re sending you out there to die. Only one person’s going to make it out of that race, and most of the people going in have been training for months.”

She’s visibly shaking, but she nods. “Time is good. But—”

He gets up again, offers her a hand. “But what?”

“Why would Jabba waste the entry fee when he knows I’ll lose? That’s not how gambling works.”

Luke turns away, heading out of the engine room. Hiding his face. “He already paid the entry fee. Lost his contestant in a different game.”

They go out to the training grounds together, silently. Jabba’s retinue has only been on Groth for two days, but Luke’s been using this area for fitness and pod practice. The laser lines are stored nearby—they can be set to shock, but Luke leaves them harmless for now.

He sets up the course, muscle memory driving him through the blank pain that clouds his mind. Part of him is still sure he’s setting this up for Biggs, but Biggs is dead. Three days dead, and his body left systems away.

Luke shoves the last laser emitter into the chalky yellow dirt and straightens up. Pesca, arms wrapped around herself, is leaning against the durasteel that keeps them in the training area. She looks absurdly small, and Luke sighs. Somebody has to take care of the kid, after all, and he doubts anyone else will volunteer.

He crosses over to her. “Why’d they pick you?” he asks. “Are you fast? Quick on your feet?”

Pesca shakes her head. “I’m not good for much, really.”

“Where did you work before?”

“Back on Tatooine? Construction.”

Luke blinks. “Construction?”

“It was hard. I’m too small for it.” Pesca looks at him then. “I’ve been thinking—they’re just getting rid of me, aren’t they. It doesn’t matter if you tell them I’m not ready. They don’t want to feed me anymore; they want me to die.”

Luke presses his lips tight. “Yeah,” he says, softly, because there is no way to deny it now. “I’m sorry, Pesca.”

She glances back at her bare feet in the yellow dust, then up at Luke again. “I’ll run away,” she says.

“You’re chipped,” says Luke. “You can’t.”

“There’s a rumor,” she says. “The med droids, the ones who put the chips in—they can scan for them. And once you know where it is, you can take it out.”

Luke stares at her. “Say that’s true,” he says. “Then what?”

She shrugs. “Run.”

“On a Hutt-controlled planet, and one you know nothing about.” Luke breathes a bitter laugh. “That’s as much a death sentence as the arena.”

“But Jabba doesn’t get the satisfaction,” Pesca says. “And I get to pretend I have some hope.”

“Still a death sentence,” says Luke.

Pesca shrugs defiantly. Then she wraps her arms around herself again and starts to cry.

Luke turns away. He still has not wept for Biggs’ death.

 

iv.

When Luke makes the recommendation to defer Pesca to the next race, the overseer laughs.

“You want to take that up with Jabba?” he asks, prodding at Luke’s ribs. “Huh, girl?”

Luke backs down. Encounters with Jabba mean a sustained rush of terror, accompanied by a heavy dose of the wrong pronouns and a wide array of risks. Death, of course, because every slave risks death in Jabba’s presence, but other things too. Luke’s been paraded at award ceremonies in scanty outfits, and sometimes he thinks he’d rather die than have hands on him again, calling him a pretty girl and a little slut.

But it’s not even the treatment itself that’s the worst, he tells himself, the slurs and the kneeling and the greedy half-hidden touches. It’s keeping his mouth shut when he’s aching with the fact that he’s not a woman. When his body, exposed like that, feels even more off and wrong than it does every day.

So in the middle of their session the next morning, he tells Pesca what the overseer said.

Pesca nods. “I’ll run,” she says again.

“If you can get the chip out,” says Luke.

“I’ll run anyway,” she says.

Luke flinches. Even he isn’t that suicidal, not yet. “You’ve got better chances in the arena.”

“I don’t care.” She wipes sweat from her forehead, pushes a curl back towards her braid. “I’ve got a friend who works in droid maintenance. Tomorrow night we’ll see if we can get the chip out.”

Tomorrow night. Night before the race. Luke sighs. He’s got a race that day too, and he doesn’t want two deaths weighing on him as he flies. Biggs is enough.

But they’ve all had enough choices taken from them, and he won’t take this one from Pesca.

Luke switches the laser emitters back on. “Well,” he says, “until then we’ve got to make it look like you’re training.”

 

v.

He wakes to commotion. Guards storm through the quarters, shouting threats, and it takes a moment for Luke to remember: Pesca. Pesca ran.

He gets off his mat, doing his best to look confused and sleepy. The guards press them into a huddle and herd them out to the steps of Jabba’s Groth resort.

Luke scans the area warily. Jabba’s nowhere in sight, not yet. Seems like the guards don’t want to anger him with news of their negligence.

“Slaves of the Exalted Jabba!”

The Dug head overseer is in front of them, flanked by two more Gamorrean guards. He has something in his hand, but Luke is too short to see what it is over the heads lined up in front of him.

“One of your number made a foolish choice tonight,” the overseer announces. “She defied her vows to the Exalted Jabba and spurned all that he provides! Know this: such a choice is nothing but danger. You have no skills to survive beyond these courts, no place of shelter, no safety without Jabba’s protection. Do you hate life and seek for death? Then try to depart from the courts of Lord Jabba. Here the hand of the mightiest guards you.”

The slaves stand silent; Luke shifts uneasily. If Pesca’s tracker detonated, he thinks, the overseer would say so. She must be unaccounted for.

Even alive.

“Slaves of the Exalted Jabba!” the overseer begins again. “We seek to protect you from the dangers outside Jabba’s courts, and from your own stupidity that drives you to death. But small minds require firm lessons.”

The two guards beside him start towards the crowd of slaves. Luke feels a desperate pulse in his ears, his fingers, his chest. Feels his mind start to beg: _not me. Not me. Please not me_.

They seize a girl Pesca’s size and drive her forward. The guards start shouting.

“Run! Run, blast it!”

She stands still a moment. Looks up to the night sky.

And then, as the guards train their weapons on her, she starts stepping firmly towards the boundary.

“Run,” they keep yelling. “Run!”

Luke can see the overseer’s hands now. He’s got a transmitter, and he’s adjusting the settings.

The young woman, still walking steadily, reaches the street. And Luke can hide from the sight, but the sound is enough.


	2. But oh Hold On

vi.

Luke’s back at the blasted inertial compensator. He should be working on his pod, giving everything a once-over before the race this afternoon, but the crewmember who finished this job after Luke left to train Pesca managed to screw it up pretty impressively. He’s in a hurry, irritated and restless, and the fiddly thing won’t cooperate.

“Hey kid.”

Sarlacc bile. He straightens up, tries not to glare at the man approaching him—one of Jabba’s smugglers. “Yes?”

“Help me out a sec, would you? My copilot’s wandered off and I need an extra set of hands.”

Luke glances back at his work a second. The casual phrasing is nice, but it doesn’t mean he’d get away with refusing, so he nods and follows.

“My main shield generator cut out on me and I’m replacing it,” the smuggler explains, as they head over to a Corellian-style light freighter. “It’s not set up so one person can detach it; you gotta hit all these different levers at the same time. People sabotage, you know.”

Luke nods again.

“You don’t talk much, do you, kid?” The smuggler shakes his head. “Got a name?”

“Luke.”

“Han Solo. Captain of the Millennium Falcon.” He gestures to the Corellian freighter. “What do you do round here?”

“I race pods,” Luke says. He keeps his voice flat as best he can, tries not to think about Pesca or Biggs. “Work repairs otherwise.”

Han, reaching towards the shield generator, peers back at him. “You like flying?”

Luke shrugs as he steps up to help. “Sure.”

“Sure?” Han scoffs. He gestures to the levers Luke needs to work. “Come on. Flying is life. Just you and the controls, huh? Picking up speed, outrunning the world.”

“Podracing tracks are circles, Captain,” Luke says. He shoves the levers and feels the piece pop free. “You just end up back where you started.”

“You should make a real run someday,” Han says, as they lift the shield generator off. “Set your own hyperdrive coordinates, navigate an asteroid field. You’ll believe me about flying then, see if you don’t.”

Luke stares at him. Han stares back.

“Shit,” says Han. “You’re stuck here, aren’t you?”

Luke swallows. “Yeah,” he says. “Got the chip and everything.”

“Shit,” Han says again. “Look, like—I always knew Jabba was a slimeball but I figured at least he hired his racers. How long have you…”

“Three years.” Luke knows Han’s trying to meet his eyes, but he can’t do it. He’s too angry, too scared of letting go of the anger and finding out Han actually sort of cares. “Probably past my prime now.”

“You win a lot?”

“Placed in every race I’ve flown.”

Han’s eyebrows rise. “That’s talent, kid.”

Luke looks up then, jaw tight. “That’s survival, Captain,” he says. “I start losing, Jabba won’t keep me around.”

Han pauses. Nods.

“Listen,” he says. “What name do you fly under?”

“Skywalker,” says Luke. “Why?”

“No reason,” Han says. “Look, I—I gotta go find Chewie; he’s got my replacement part. You racing today?”

“Yeah,” Luke says.

“I’ll be there,” says Han.

 

vii.

Luke races. He doesn’t win.

Best way he can put it is that his reflexes in the pod are all survival instinct, and he’s not sure anymore death would be so bad.

 

viii.

Standing by his wrecked pod, Luke feels small. The arena towers above him; Jabba is an angry smudge in the best box. The planet is unsteady under his feet.

The Gamorreans come for him, grabbing at the wrist he landed on when he wrecked. Doesn’t matter, Luke tells himself; it’ll be over soon. They’re not on Tatooine, so he won’t face the Sarlacc.

But they don’t take him straight to Jabba. Instead, he’s pushed towards the dressing rooms the dancers use. Luke’s stomach turns. Death is death in the end, but he doesn’t want to spend his last moments half-naked, itching to escape his own body.

The dancers have the decency not to look at him as he changes, miserably, into a wispy top and a half-sheer skirt with more slits than fabric. The guards are not so kind, and neither are the mirrors.

Sadi, the Twi’lek who coordinates the dancers, keeps the rest quick. Someone shaves his legs, which he’s tried before to do on his own but botched completely; two others turn his chair away from the mirrors so he won’t have to watch as they add makeup and work with his hair. He’s rigid in the chair, wincing at the brushes. Death is death, he tells himself. And Biggs is gone already; there is no one who will ache to see him go like this.

The hands pull away. He takes a deep breath, peeks in the mirror, and regrets it. He doesn’t feel real.

Sadi bends to his level and holds out the last thing: a collar. Luke runs a hand over his face, takes it the collar, and snaps it around his own neck. Then Sadi, who he barely knows, lifts him to his feet and hugs him.

Luke clings.

The guards pull them apart too soon, threading a chain through the loop in Luke’s collar and locking it all into place. Luke wraps his arms around himself, pressing against the pain and trying to hide.

They follow the dancers out. The courtroom is loud, echoing with music and laughter. Banners announce that Jabba has won three events today. He was registered for five—Pesca’s a forfeit, Luke’s a loss—but there is no mention of that.

The champions are displayed on a central platform. Luke recognizes two of them: Edrisla is a Togruta who competes in footraces, and Sima is a gladiator from Mandalore. Guests group around them, touching and catcalling.

Luke’s usual spot is in the center of the platform. But this time, his chain is attached to a post in the corner of the room. The guards tie his hands behind his back, push him to his knees, and leave.

He closes his eyes. Tries to calm his racing heart, tries to pretend he’s not wearing these blasted clothes. Tries to shut out the noise, the fear, the ache in his wrist, the callous disregard that presses into his mind.

Then something, a hand, presses up against his bare torso. He flinches violently. As his eyes startle open, he sees a Rodian crouching in front of him. Laughing.

Luke bites his tongue against the anger that rises up. He’s here to be executed, not to get felt up by guests.

The hand doesn’t leave. It keeps touching, fingers moving over Luke’s ribs and back. Luke stays stiff.

“First time in the courtroom?” the Rodian asks, in Basic.

Luke shakes his head, keeps his eyes down. The Rodian scoffs.

“Jabba is remiss. He should teach you how to please a guest.”

Luke feels sick. Maybe, instead of being executed, he’s being reassigned. Maybe Pesca had the right idea after all.

The hand is in his hair now, dragging his head closer so the chain tightens.

“Or,” the guest says, low, “I could teach you.”

 “Or,” says another voice, “you could kriff off before I shoot you.”

Luke looks up. It’s Han, the smuggler from earlier, and his hand is on his holstered blaster.

The Rodian gets up. “Solo,” he says. “Didn’t think you were the type.”

“Like I said,” Han repeats. “Kriff off.”

The Rodian leaves and Luke tries not to meet Han’s eyes, tries to ignore the confused recognition there. But Han crouches down too.

“Thought you said your name was Luke.”

“It is,” Luke insists, and then, reluctantly: “Not the one I was born with.”

Han looks him over. Nods.  “Luke,” he says, “I—”

Silence falls in the courtroom. Han glances around, notices Jabba about to speak.

“Gotta go,” he mutters, and heads off just as Luke sees the Gamorreans heading his way.

It is both easier and harder than he thought it would be to get up. To not cry. To walk towards Jabba at a steady pace, his shoulders back.

He bows. Tells himself it is the last time.

Jabba grunts. “Skywalker,” he says. “For a human girl you were a good racer. But you let me down.”

Luke’s mouth is dry. “I know, Exalted One.”

“I do not keep racers who lose.”

“I know, Exalted One.”

“But,” Jabba says. He pauses long enough that Luke dares to look up. “Other people do.”

Someone steps forward with a datapad. Jabba signs it.

“Han Solo!” he yells.

Han steps forward. Looks Luke in the face, and signs.

 

ix.

The celebration in the courtroom isn’t over, but Han takes Luke’s chain and leads him away. Luke keeps his head down and his shoulders back. Holds onto the fact that he was ready to die, and this scruffy smuggler took that away from him.

Holds on, and doesn’t hope.

They go back to Han’s chambers. The chain comes off his collar; Han disappears, locking the door. Luke sits down on the floor and folds his knees up over his exposed body. His bad wrist, still tied up, pounds, but his emotions are fading into numbness.

Then Han’s back, and he’s saying “oh shit, sorry,” and Luke’s hands come free. Luke blinks, trying to bring the room into focus. There’s a big creature, hairy, nearby, and when Luke can’t remember the species he realizes how sick he feels. How scared, and tired. Han’s touching him, and he doesn’t like it, and so he twitches away and curls up on the floor, hiding.

“Hey,” Han says. “Kid. I’m just trying to get you into some new clothes. Something like what you were wearing the other day?”

Luke looks up. It’s true; he can see it.

“That okay?” Han asks, and Luke nods, reaching out to grab the clothes. He turns away from Han, tries to squirm out of his dancer’s costume and into the shirt and pants without revealing anything, but when he glances over his shoulder he sees that Han has turned his back.

When he’s dressed, he curls up again on the floor. He doesn’t know what to do, what to say.

“Hey,” Han says. “Look—I’m sorry. But I gotta get us out of here. Jabba ain’t too happy with what I pulled, and maybe you aren’t either but if he gets over this party of his and catches us, we’re all goners. You, me, Chewie. And look, I—I can’t do that to Chewie.”

Chewie interrupts with a half-muffled shout, filled with more concern than Luke feels like he’s heard in years. When Luke looks up, Chewie is bending over him, holding out his arms.

And Luke cares, suddenly, fiercely. Not that he didn’t care about Pesca, or Biggs, because he did. But he couldn’t do anything for them; he was a slave and he couldn’t ever win.

And he’s Han’s slave now, sure, but if that’s what it takes to win against Jabba, well. He’ll take it. For now, he’ll take it.

He gets to his feet, looks Han in the eye. “I’m ready,” he says.

 

x.

But he feels like he’s forgotten something.

On the flight deck, with a few too many guards watching a little too closely, he remembers. Stops. Han turns to him, pulls at his sleeve.

“Come on!”

The world blurs out around him. His lips move but he can’t talk, can’t force words past the fear and the rapid pound of his pulse.

“Luke,” says Han. “Luke!”

Luke sucks in a sharp breath. He’s shaking, but Han’s hand is firm and gentle on his wrist.

“The,” he starts, “the.”

“The what?” Han asks.

“Chip.” Luke can’t look Han in the eye. “The chip. If you didn’t reset the tracker, it’ll go off.”

He shouldn’t have said anything, he thinks. Maybe that was Han’s plan. He doesn’t know why it would be, but maybe it was.

His breath is still catching in his throat, his eyes wandering everywhere but Han’s face. The Gamorrean guards are getting closer.

Han sees them, too. “Listen,” he says. “I have the tracker. I reset it. It’s okay. Okay?”

Luke gulps. Nods.

“Good,” says Han. “Cause we gotta run.”

His hand slips down to grip Luke’s, and they run for the ship. Chewie is on board, has the engines going, and they duck between laser bolts up the ramp and in.

Han drops Luke’s hand and digs in his pocket. “Here,” he says. “You want the tracker?”

Luke blinks. Han owns him, even if it doesn’t feel like it. This has to be a trick.

“No,” he says, slowly. “No, master. It’s yours.”

Han slumps against the wall. “Bantha shit,” he says. “Okay. So it’s not on paper yet, won’t be until we get out of Hutt Space, but I’m not into this slave shit. There’s people who want you free; I’m taking you to them.”

“Who?” Luke asks, cautiously. It can’t be his family; he long ago gave up hoping that Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru were alive.

“Kenobi? Somebody Kenobi?” Han runs a hand through his hair. “Long story. Hired me to rescue a princess from the Empire, but the princess pretty much rescued herself. Still got paid, though. And then Kenobi decided it was time to rescue you. Skywalker, he said. Find Skywalker.”

“Ben Kenobi?” Luke asks.

“Think so,” Han says. “You know him?”

“A little,” says Luke. “He was just—sort of a hermit.”

“Bit of a weirdo, huh,” Han says. “But he and the Organas of Alderaan want you free, so you’re free, kid.”

He holds out the tracker again. Luke takes it this time, his gut turning.

“We’ll find a med droid or something to get it removed as soon as we can,” Han goes on. “If you want, anyway.”

“Yeah,” Luke says. “I want that.”

Tracker in hand, he goes up to watch the jump into hyperspace. The stars streak past in myriads, and Luke tells himself that his choices, too, are exploding into brightness.

He doesn’t know what he wants, but he knows this: he isn’t going back.


End file.
